“Provocation” describes how British and American imperial advances felt to the natives. Resistance to the humane secular universalism of Anglo America was provocative to blond democrats. There was an unsatisfying failure to agree on the basic rules of discourse.
In a brief editorial the June 10, 2009 Wall Street Journal describes how Kim Jong IL has become provocative: launching both short- and long-range nuclear weapons, testing nuclear weapons, detaining a South Korean manager at a complex just north of the DMZ. And now; arresting and convicting two American journalists.

The paper predictably glides by the issue where the journalists were picked up: maybe in China, but, maybe, in North Korea. The editorial makes clear its position on the issue: No provocation either way.

What should the American response be? What would the editorial writer like to see for a response? The piece congratulates Secretary of State Clinton for threatening to again include North Korea on the list of states that sponsor terror. The editorial writer approvingly notes that that is actually a hardening of the position taken in the last two years of the Bush administration.

North Korea, of course, has to make a very different analysis on the basic issue of whether foreign journalists were in North Korean space. Surely Americans have taken violations of their space by outsiders very very seriously. Violations of North Korean sovereignty by outsiders represent a dramatic provocation to North Koreans.

The editorial concludes with the observation that North Korea cannot be bought off with presents and discussions. One wonders what the writer has in mind; specifically. If one looked at the blond experience in Asia over the past 500 years, one might conclude that the blond response will be force.

IQ data suggests that North Korean young men do well in applied physics class. Sooner or later the North Korean physicists will get the engineering right, and an American state touching the Pacific will be minutes from annihilation from yet another launching pad.

Nuclear weapons are too dangerous for negotiations to fail because a handful of hardliners want them to fail. North Korea has the same right to protect its borders that Texas has.

My position: The taking and imprisoning of the American journalists should not alter America’s willingness to discuss nuclear weapons with North Korea. There is no other option. But the American public should know, where the journalists were when they were arrested, and how they happened to be there.